Many people report that solar-cooked food actually tastes better than food that is cooked conventionally. This is especially true with carrots, which are much sweeter, and with meat, which is more tender. Taste can be an issue in places where people are used to eating food that has a somewhat smokey taste from cooking fires.

David Whitfield recalls one year he did a cooker course on the Chile Bolivian boarder, and he had a local coordinator who was doing a strong follow-up for a masters class. The participants didn't like the solar food to begin with because it tasted different than the resineous taste from burning the evergreen Tolah bushes, that produced a heavy oily substance on the posts, but after 2 months they began to prefer the solar taste and the women's health was better because they were not ingesting so much oily substance into their lungs.